*Jerome-K-Moore

With this online art community, we have a unique opportunity to connect with our kindred. We must avail ourselves of this experience, for it may never come again.

All righty, then...
The news is out, and here's my latest rant, culled from another comment exchange I shared with the one, the only, the aMAZing Spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiderrrrrr-Guiiiiiiile!!! *That was in the voice of Bruce Campbell, from the first Spider-Man movie.*

It has to do with the new Captain America. But of course, with me there's always spillover, and nothing is safe. Commenceth el Rant-eth!!!

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Bucky Barnes with a gat, no less.
I wonder how long it will be before Joke Quesada has to reverse this misstep, and resurrect Steve Rogers. Or perhaps somebody else will.

And this brand of identity swap isn't even original, recalling how Wally West assumed the Flash mantle after the demise of Barry Allen.

Obviously, it's all in an effort to keep things fresh, reinventing old characters for new readerships.
However, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bucky Barnes. Feh.

I'm not a big fan of transforming iconic characters into legacies. Each individual's purpose in donning that particular superhero costume is specifically personal, borne from uniquely personal experience and motivation. I think it's perverse to have someone else become Batman, never having suffered the same ordeal Bruce Wayne did. Bruce Wayne IS Batman. For someone else, someone new, to carry on in his guise after him is disgusting. There can only be ONE.
Yes, I hated Batman Beyond, but more for how it drastically over-stretched the premise. That was a pure sellout by Bruce Timm.

Having said this, I do believe there are some characters that are constructed to feasibly be legacies. Green Lantern actually starts out as one, becoming a member of an already vast, intergalactic community. Still, nobody should specifically supplant Hal Jordan. Reinvent the character completely. There's room for it here, even though, again, every attempt DC has made has sucked Oan weenie. LOL!

Additionally, Iron Man can still work as a generational character, since the armor continues to evolve, is impersonal, and Tony Stark lacked the personal impetus that Bruce Wayne, Bruce Banner, Clark Kent, Peter Parker, and others gained their identity from.

If you revamp Captain America, have the balls to completely redesign him. It's obscene for "Bucky" to don the same uniform in some psycho-pathetic tribute. Carry on by boldly taking up the fight, assuming your own brave new visage and image, instead of masquerading as someone else and appropriating his credibility, esteem, and authoritative intimidation. Bucky hasn't earned ANY of this. Adapt his ideals, not his identity. But typically, they'll use this opportunity to unveil a darker, grimmer, grittier Captain America, and blame it on the state of the world. An amateurish cop out. Like Superman, Captain America is supposed to be an incorruptible symbol, bringing light to darkness, shining like an optimistically "white-bread" beacon through any adversity. Wonder Woman also works best this way. That's their effective dynamic.

It's okay to preserve the sentimentality of Cap's famous shield, installing it as a "sacred talisman," to be solemnly passed on to successors. But the Super Soldier serum was originally supposed to be a one-time only godmaker. Any writers who could not work stories within this stricture, simply weren't being creative enough. In fact, this restriction opens more dramatically interesting possibilities, instilling a more compelling vulnerability.

I may post this rant in my Journal. LOL!
Let everybody take a whack at me.